Monday, February 11, 2013

A Review of Little White Duck: A Childhood in China by Na Liu and Andrés Vera Martínez

What
this graphic novel points out with classy in-your-face power is that we really
don’t know what it’s like to grow up in China. Or rather, in the China of the
late 1970s. Little White Duck succeeds on so many levels I’m not sure where to
begin. We watch a little girl named Da Qin learning and growing just by seeing
the moments of her life. We understand more about what it means to be part of a
great country where people don’t walk around saying, “Oh dear, we’re
communists!” No, this is their life, their worries, their pride. We experience
all of this through focused language and rich, strong artwork in a book that
reminds me, subtly, of Sandra Cisneros’s A House on Mango Street.

I
remember when North Korea’s leader died year before last, we here in America
were inclined to believe that the crowd’s tears were fake. Maybe some of them
were—but maybe not. In Little White Duck, Da Qin wants to know why her parents
are so sad, why her mother is weeping. “Grandfather has died,” they tell her,
and they mean Chairman Mao.

Aside
from showing us life in China, the book gives marvelous little life lessons
through Da Qin’s experiences—such as when she insists on wearing her best coat
to visit the village of her father’s mother. She is baffled and upset by how
mean her grandmother is, and by the way the children in this impoverished place
treat her. But she is also changed somehow.

There’s
humor, too. For example, at one point Da Qin and her sister don’t want to eat
their vegetables, and their mom gives them a hair-raising version of our culture’s
“But there are children starving in Africa” speech. Then there’s the rat-catching
incident…

To
revisit the artwork, Booklist says it “evokes both traditional Chinese
scrolls and midcentury propaganda posters.” We are even given a spread of such
posters, with translations provided at the end of the book. The colors, the lines, the style all combine to make this book as art, worthy of a coffee table or a better still a gallery exhibit.

Little White Duck is an
amazing book, truly. My only question is whether it’s really for kids. Well, I
would read it with the 10-and-ups. And I would read it with high school students. It’s a good accompaniment to a study of
world history and of other cultures. Or US history and the Cold War. It could
prompt conversation as a set of moral tales, or it could prompt writing about
what our experiences teach us.

Whether
you’re 10 or 40, this book from husband-and-wife team Martínez and Liu is a work to enjoy and ponder. Or, as Aristotle would no doubt put it,
Little White Duck both delights and teaches.

ABOUT ME

I am madly in love with children's books and want to get great books into the hands of kids who will love them, too. Books are like magnifying glasses, intensifying the wonders of people and their imaginations and everything in the world from spiders to shoelaces. Books are a unique sort of conversation. I write them, too, mostly MG fantasy, but sometimes poetry and picture books. Thank you, Johanes Gutenberg!